Plot
The Strategic Air Command is about to introduce the B-52 Stratofortress bomber as its primary manned strategic weapon. Stationed at 329th Bomb Squadron, Castle Air Force Base, California, twenty-year United States Air Force (USAF) veteran Master Sergeant Chuck Brennan (Karl Malden) dislikes his commanding officer, the "hotshot" Lieutenant Colonel Jim Herlihy (Efrem Zimbalist Jr.). Brennan has not trusted Herlihy since an incident in the Korean War. This career-long problem interferes with flight operations and aircraft support. When Herlihy starts dating Brennan's daughter Lois (Natalie Wood), tensions grow. Brennan demands his daughter break off the relationship.
Brennan, Herlihy and others try to solve all the technical problems that plague the introduction of the B-52. On one top-secret test flight to Africa, after being refueled mid-air, a control panel short-circuits, causing a fire. Herlihy orders everyone to bail out and ejects Brennan when he refuses. After safely landing the burning bomber at Castle AFB, Herlihy sends out search parties who recover all of the crew successfully except for Brennan. Following a hunch, Herlihy eventually finds the mechanic who is severely injured, and airlifts him from remote back country by helicopter to a hospital. Realizing that he was wrong about Herlihy who risked his life to bring him home, Brennan accepts that his daughter and his commanding officer should reunite. Eventually Brennan also has to choose between a high-paying civilian job and when told that his discharge papers are ready, he decides to continue his career in the USAF that he loves.
Read more about this topic: Bombers B-52
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The plot was most interesting. It belonged to no particular age, people, or country, and was perhaps the more delightful on that account, as nobody’s previous information could afford the remotest glimmering of what would ever come of it.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)